Posts Tagged ‘releases’

Heya friends! It’s been a good few months since I’ve published a new interview here on the blog. Suffice it to say, I’ve been more than just a littlebusy in the interim….

Me as a kaomoji these last few months….

That said, I’ve very much missed both talking to awesome folk in and around our communities and sharing those insightful conversations with y’all. That’s why today, I’m hopping back on that interview train!

Presenting a very special guest and friend that’s I’ve been happy to have worked with in the intervening busy months, everyone welcome to the blog Alex Soborov aka Purely Grey of Tracked Records! Enjoy!

IDecade—yet another amazing Italian chipmusician—is a relative newcomer to chiptune. You may have seen him posting his LSDJ tutorial videos around the Facebook group recently, but he started in 2015 using Milkytracker. Since his transition to LSDJ in 2016, he’s been making catchy dance tracks in various genres, and he’s made an immense amount of progress in the 2 short years he’s been releasing musi. With his latest album, ‘Sinergy’—released this past December—he’s ready to set the international chip community on fire.

Hello friends and welcome to the chilliest What’s On Tap? in recent memory. Here in the barren wastes between the midwest and east coast of the United States, we have gone from an unseasonably warm weekend to ‘holy crap I forgot how much cold hurts’ literally overnight. But never fear, this month’s tunes are guaranteed to set fire to your speakers while the beer style is sure to warm the heart of even the coldest Grinch.

This month I have the pleasure of reviewing ‘Run From Reality’, the latest release from Hide Your Tigers on the Pterodactyl Squad netlabel. Las Vegas chip musician Cheyne Shirley is the mastermind behind this project, as well as being one half of the duo Decaying Tigers. This album is loaded from start to finish with dance/trance/EDM bangers, and Cheyne’s weapons of mass construction are a pile of Game Boys running LSDJ. Each track has layers upon layers of bass, with just enough room in the spectrum for percussion, backing pads, and the occasional melody. The album is an easy,lighthearted, and happy listen. ‘Run From Reality’might beis best summarized by the following 15-second ad in the style of a stereotypical commercial voiceover:

I know we here at ChipWIN generally tend to stay away from Buzzfeed-y listicle-type articles, but with all the different music coming out these days it can be super hard to actually keep up with everything. If you don’t know where to look, you’ll miss something great – and if you DO know where to look, all your friends will love you for giving them dank music recommendations!* (*Note: ChipWIN does not guarantee love of any kind regardless of the circumstance.)

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, here’s some of my favorite places to find chiptune and chiptune-adjacent music.

Welcome to the fall edition of What’s On Tap! Cooler weather pairs nicely with cool tunes and the first fall seasonal beers this month – let’s rock!

Cambridge-based musician Jellica is a veteran of the chip scene, having released 14+ EP/LP online, running the Kittenrock netlabel, and performing live both in the United Kingdom and abroad. Jellica’s style is somewhat fluid between releases, moving deftly between various genres of electro-pop oriented sounds.

Released on August 31st, Jellica’s newest offering ‘Retrotech Romance’ is a masterclass in SID sounds, with dual Commodore 64 chips pumping out waves of intense textures and funky rhythms. An interesting aspect of this album is that it takes time – each track is at least 4:00 long and all evolve organically rather than using a standard verse/chorus approach. In the style of the American minimalist composers Philip Glass/Terry Riley/John C. Adams, musical events unfold over a series of minutes rather than seconds. Sometimes these are small nudges to the musical orbit rather than colossal impacts; the addition of a higher set of accompanying blips or a 7-tone melody that unfolds over twenty seconds. In our current environment of 140-character snippets, ‘Retrotech Romance’ closes out the summer with a marathon session of electronic jams.

ChipWIN Comps Historical Context: Year Five & Beyond…?

Welcome to the final entry in this 5 part series of ChipWIN compilation crazy tales, wild stories, and occasional insights (previous entries here: 1, 2, 3, & 4). If nothing else, it’s felt really good to me to just get a bit more about all this craziness out and about for folk to read. For additional project info, don’t forget about our FAQ and Mission Statement docs as well. The stories in this series are a bit better tho. (^_−)−☆

At any rate, I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey with me. Feel free to dive into the final set of tales (for now!) after the break.